The woman—I heard her first name as “Maldonna”—told me she called her pet baby pigeon “Golnessa”, which corresponds to a Persian name meaning “daughter of a flower”.
Pigeons are an integral part of the human story from the very beginning of recorded history. They have demonstrated their utility and their ability time and again. In some parts of the world, people remember these things; in others the attitude is “What have you done for us lately?”
People of the so-called Near East—including Iran—maintain a fondness verging on reverence for pigeons going back at least 10,000 years. Westerners, on the other hand, are fond of their high standard of living, and mostly hate the way pigeons shit all over it.